


how have the mighty

by justholdstill



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 14x16 coda, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Destiel - Freeform, Domesticity in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Established Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Shot, Pining, Road Trips, Season/Series 14 Spoilers, also don't text & drive kids, anyway I'd really like to go to NM, canonverse, cosmic Americana, dean/cas - Freeform, husbands arguing, my codas always get too damn big for their britches, soft!dean can't stop himself from blowing up Cas' phone, teetering on the edge of an, vaguely eldritch bunker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-18 12:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18249719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justholdstill/pseuds/justholdstill
Summary: Dean can't stop texting Cas on his road trip because he's Helplessly Smitten™; Cas has pie and existential angst.





	how have the mighty

**Author's Note:**

> minor spoiler for 14x17, but nothing that you won't know if you've watched the preview for the next ep.
> 
> also, I mention at one point that Cas is watching Captain Marvel. There is one silly throwaway line about shipping speculation, but I don't think it gives away any major plot points. If you're concerned, please feel free to message me and I can tell you where to skip!

 

 

 

It’s six hundred and thirty miles to Santa Fe, give or take; the first text lights up his phone mere seconds after he’s pulled his car out of the driveway, still a good ten minutes or so before the muddy gravel road smooths out into pavement. It’ll be hours yet until the sunrise is anything more than a weak glow clinging to the horizon.

 

_4:23 AM: Don’t you go doing anything stupid, you hear me?_

**_4:35 AM:_ ** **_💋_ ** **_🍑_ **

**_4:35 AM: I won’t ask you to define stupid._ **

****

_4:36 AM: never shoulda taught you that one_

_4:36 AM: that’s on me_

_4:38 AM: Cas_

_4:42 AM: promise me_

Castiel doesn’t promise.

 

He does, however, pull over at the first Gas n’ Sip he sees. The clerk is bed-headed and bleary-eyed, so he doesn’t look twice when Castiel produces an American Express card that proclaims him to be “Alicia Rivers” to pay for his fuel, his coffee, for the raspberry danish for Dean that he doesn’t think to feel foolish about until he’s halfway back across the parking lot. He sits there in the driver’s seat next to pump 6 maybe longer than he should, warming his hands around the cheap paper cup, half-listening to the low drone of yesterday’s news. He texts Dean a moving picture of an infant cat wrapped in a blanket like a burrito. A video of a parrot that seems to be extremely enthusiastic about heavy metal music.

 

He texts:

 

**_5:09 AM: I will be careful._ **

****

 

 

7:30 AM produces a self-portrait of Dean scowling humorously at his own mug of coffee.

 

At 7:32, there’s a dim shot of Sam wearing a similar expression as he peers down at his laptop, brow intensely furrowed. His skin looks pale and worn, his eyes deep-shadowed as if he’s hardly slept, though perhaps that’s just the sallow light from his computer’s screen.

 

Castiel rather suspects it’s not.

 

At 7:49, it’s Jack fast asleep in front of the television on one of Dean’s unsightly armchairs, his mouth hanging open, his hand still hidden inside a box of Frooty-O’s. He looks…well, he looks angelic, haloed by the open door, and something about the otherwise serene image twists so sharply inside of Castiel’s chest that he snaps the phone closed and tosses it into the footwell of the empty passenger seat.

 

For the next few hundred miles, Castiel just stares down the barrel of the highway and breathes.  

 

_8:57 AM: we’re taking a case up in iowa_

_8:57 AM: thought you oughta know_

_8:57 AM: buncha mysterious disappearances_

_8:58 AM: you know how much I like those 🙄_

**_9:05 AM: A change of scenery will be good for everyone, I imagine. Sam especially._ **

**_9:07 AM: Please keep a close eye on Jack, Dean_ **

**_9:07 AM: I’m concerned he may try to overextend his powers_ **

**_9:09 AM: I want to trust him, but we’re still not sure what he’s capable of at this point._ **

****

**_10: 15 AM: …Dean?_ **

****

**_11:13 AM: D E A N_ **

****

****

****

He doesn’t really need gas again, but he makes the stop in Colorado anyway, at a particular station on the outskirts of Pueblo.

 

It doesn’t look like much, comically small and haphazard – a tiny green two-story house next to a tiny, ancient gas bar with only two pumps, next to a tiny combination diner-and-souvenir-shop, both enterprises crammed into a converted single-wide mobile home. The whole operation backs on to the wildly overgrown yard of a boarded-up auto shop that is populated only, as far as they’ve ever seen, by a fleet of rust-riddled school buses in various states of decay, four broken-down washing machines, a bulbous purple dinosaur statue made of concrete, and a handful of decidedly untrustworthy chickens.

It reminds Castiel of Bobby’s home, in some ways, had he ever known Bobby to hold an interest in prehistoric reptiles or their foolish domesticated descendants.

 

It’s the kind of place Dean likes to call a joint, and even though the neon sign out front says ANDY’S in  flourishing script, this joint takes it’s sole, very prompt direction from a wizened little spitfire of a woman named Estelle. Castiel has never met Andy; none of them have. Probably for the best, as they’ve since learned that Andy’s been dead for nearly fifteen years now, and none of them necessarily enjoys mixing that kind of business with this kind of pleasure.

 

Still, his grandson Johnny mans the pumps out front, their daughter Winnie holds court from the gift section, and Estelle…

 

Estelle makes the pies.

 

She’s perhaps four foot eight, with the crackling, cigarette-coarsened voice of a retired lounge singer, and she’s wearing a different wig in the same shocking shade of hot pink every time they see her. Her aprons are always a pristinely starched white, she swears like a sailor if there are no children in the dining room, and her pecan pie comes topped with small mountains of maple bourbon whipped cream.

 

Dean would likely worship at her feet if he thought for a hot second she’d let him get away with that kind of nonsense.

 

She must see Castiel pulling up before he gets inside, because once he’s stepped through the door she’s not looking at him but she’s already grinning, her hands busy working something inside a deep yellow bowl. “You better not have done something to that gorgeous car to be driving that bucket of bolts around, Mr. Trenchcoat.” She points a wooden spoon at his chest accusatorily as he settles himself on a stool at the counter.

 

“The Impala is safe and well with Dean, I have no doubt. I dare say I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t. How are you, Estelle?”  

 

She wipes her hands to pour him a coffee the size of a soup bowl without even asking, slides a speckled jug of cream across the Formica, and winks. “You know me, honey, always living the goddamn dream.” She eyes him appraisingly as the liquid in the cup turns the same muddy brown as the Mississippi river. “Headed home?”

 

“Not today, I’m afraid. I’m, ah…I have some business to attend to in New Mexico.”

 

“The business of trouble, no doubt.”

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

She snorts. “I’m on to you and your big blue eyes. Don’t play innocent for me, ok? How’s that young man of yours doing?”

 

“He’ - he’s better than he’s been in a long while, I think,” Castiel muses, tasting his drink, slowly stirring another dollop of cream in and watching it bloom in the depths. “He’s had a difficult year. We…have all had a difficult year, to be honest. I’m very proud of him.”

 

“It’s not an easy age, I know that much.”

 

“Yes, I have been told that forty can be a problematic birthday for some hu- um, for some people. Perhaps some more than others.”

 

“Forty?” Estelle cackles at him, slapping her palm down so hard that it rattles the spoon in his cup.

Not for the first time in his earthly life, Castiel just assumes he’s missed the joke, and he’s mentally preparing to scan his memory for less ambiguous conversational topics to switch to when she gets out, “shit, I was talking about your son, sugar, but you go on with your bad self.”

 

His phone pings then, and he’s glad of the interruption so that he can duck his head down to hide the way heat is crawling up his neck and into his cheeks.

 

_12:34 PM: I’ll be careful, Cas._

_12:35 PM: the road treatin’ you ok?_

“Jack is fine, thank you,” he manages. She cackles again and shakes her head, moving off to busy herself with something in the kitchen.

 

**_12:37 PM: The road is adequate. Not much traffic._ **

**_12:37 PM: Estelle from Andy’s sends her regards_ **

****

_Your young man._ The words ring in his head, vibrating at the same frequency Castiel feels when he places his hand on Baby’s hood to feel her engine purring inside; it’s both an oddly soothing sensation, and one that discomfits him with the knowledge of its potential for power.

 

“I know from experience you’re not likely to start proposing to me over my desserts like your friend,” she says, startling him out of his reverie as she comes back around the corner with a plate in her hand, “but I think even you might like this one. It’s an experiment, and you can be my latest guinea pig.”  

 

It’s just a thin sliver of a pie that’s pale gold and molten-looking in the middle, browned and sparkling with sugar crystals on top. Castiel looks askance at it until Estelle sighs, nudging a fork into his grasp. “Salt & honey, honey. Sweet as can be with just a bit of a special kick. Like you.”

 

_12: 40 PM: withOUT me?!_

_12:40 PM: Cas you’re friggin’ fired_

_12:40 PM: this is ULTIMATE BETRAYAL_

_12:40 PM: how could you do this to me?_

_12:45 PM: (please tell Estelle I love her)_

Castiel snaps a photo of the honey pie glistening in the sunlight and sends it to Dean in retaliation. He puts his phone on vibrate and slides it back in his pocket before he takes his first bite, ignoring the series of buzzes that immediately follow.

 

The pie, as it turns out, is very good.

 

He can taste each component of the food, certainly – the salt, the honey, the rich butter in the crust, the eggs, the sweetly floral vanilla bean, even the fine-ground corn she must have used to thicken the mixture. But it’s more than that, more complex that she can possibly imagine; he closes his eyes and hums as the filling melts over his tongue and he’s flooded with the with the scent of the orange grove where the bees took pollen from the spring blossoms, with their keeper’s acrid smoke, with the sting of the breeze off the Mediterranean sea, with the warmth of the soil in the meadow where the cows grazed. The traces of farm gasoline in the field where the corn grew, even hints of the herbal soap Estelle uses to wash her hands. It’s -  

 

“Transcendent. Estelle, this is transcendent.”

 

She beams, clucks her tongue at him. “That’s a high compliment coming from you, mister ‘I’ll just have your most caffeinated beverage, please.’ I think it’s going right on the menu once I’ve tweaked it a bit more.”

 

The bell over the door jingles, a family with two small children traipses in, and Estelle winks at Castiel as she scoops up her coffee pot.

 

**_12:52 PM: get in line_ **

****

He lingers there for three quarters of an hour more, finishing the pie slowly, bite by fascinating bite, making pleasant small talk with Estelle as she bustles efficiently back and forth from the kitchen, serving her customers and performing her daily routine with a practised grace. He makes note of the way she favours her left shoulder, wincing every time she needs to lift something heavy, but she never stops to ask for help, dismisses him when he offers. Johnny comes in for lunch and sits down at the counter too, and Castiel listens for a while as he talks about the community college he’s saving to attend, his dreams of working in broadcasting someday. He’s young, bright, approximately the same age that Jack appears to be, and as Johnny answers his questions Castiel can’t help but ache.

 

He had been with Kelly when she’d bought a mobile of the planets to hang over the crib, helped her research toys and pick out books. He’d bought her special headphones so that she could play music to her child in utero, brought her fish oil supplements that she’d gagged at and swallowed anyway, that she’d requested so that the baby’s brain would develop strong and healthy.  As he’d come to know her, as a human being distinct from the strange new life path Lucifer’s machinations had thrust her into, she had been a passionate, intelligent woman who’d believed in the power of education to change the world, and she must have dreamed of similar opportunities for her own son, the brilliance of his soul an open secret that she’d espoused wholeheartedly, even as Castiel nurtured his own doubts.

 

Johnny finishes his lunch. Castiel finishes his coffee and wanders over into the gift shop. He doesn’t mean to, but suddenly he’s got a book about the history of cowboys in Colorado in his hands. Then a little wooden box of homemade coconut fudge – even Sam’s got a sweet tooth. He picks up a snow globe for Jack, puts it down, and instead spends some time staring at their wall of colorful and glittering mineral specimens. Winnie presses some of the stones into his palms, makes him close his eyes to try to get a better sense of their “vibrational energies” while she explains their healing qualities in a quasi-mystical tone. He doesn’t feel much, just sharp points of quartz poking into his flesh, the cool weight of an amazonite sphere strangely satisfying, but eventually he lets her talk him into a glittering rhodochrosite geode and hands over entirely too much of his cash for all the items at the register.

 

Once she’s wrapped the geode up for him, Winnie tapes a little card to the box. _Rhodochrosite (Manganese Carbonate, Sweet Home Mine, CO),_ he reads. _Rhodochrosite is a stone that integrates physical and spiritual energies, stimulating love and passion while energising the soul._

Castiel snorts. They might as well use all the help they can get.

 

 

Estelle makes him give her a hug before he leaves; he has to bend awkwardly in half, but at least it’s easy enough to press his fingers against her shoulder unnoticed, to let just a little of his grace bleed into the worn grooves of her joints and knit the cartilage back together, as strong as someone’s half her age. It’s not enough that she’ll notice right away; he’ll be long gone before she thinks to tie the relief to him, if she does at all.  Still, Castiel, Master of Distraction, has a contingency plan.

 

“Estelle, I may have given you the wrong impression. Between Dean and I, it isn’t - “

 

“Now you hush,” she says. And he, former warrior of heaven, wayward angel of the wayward Lord, snaps his mouth shut and does.

 

“My eyesight might be in the crapper,” – she taps the rhinestoned glasses hanging around her neck for emphasis -, “but we both know I’m not so blind yet that I can’t see the way that man looks at you.” When Castiel pretends not to know, she pokes him hard in the arm and adds, “you know when you’re finishing up here, and he’s standing out there leaning against Black Beauty just waitin’ for you to look his way, right? The way he’s always got a smile ready for you, even when you’ve been in here staring daggers at each other. I’ve seen him smile at that kid. At that tall drink of a brother. And he loves them like breathing, that much is clear. But the two things? Sweetheart. They don’t compare, and I think you both know it.”

 

Well.

 

“And if,” he begins, hesitating as the phone in his pocket vibrates again.  “And if I tell you that it can’t be like that?”

 

“I’m going to call you a fool and tell you you’d better come and see me again on the way back, young man. You’re going to be in trouble if you go home empty-handed.”

 

_1:59 PM: pecan & apple, ok?_

_1:59 PM: thaaaaaaaanks_

 

Despite himself, he knows he’s grinning as his engine rumbles to life, lets himself wear the smile until he crosses the state line and the buoyant brightness behind it almost feels like it belongs there.

 

That’s his first, his fatal mistake, he knows.

 

If it’s yours, it can be taken from you.

 

****

****

_3:22 PM: talk about a one horse town_

_3:50 PM: why do kids even try to make out in the woods anymore?_

_3:50 PM: that’s like rule #1 of how to find yourself in a horror movie scenario_

_3:50 PM: freakin’ amateurs man_

_3:58 PM: Sam says its_

_3:58 PM: and I quote_

_3:58 PM: “unnatural” to tell him I’m hungry 5 minutes after we’ve left the morgue_

_3:59 PM: can u believe?!_

_3:59 PM: I’ll show him who’s unnatural_

Castiel doesn’t stop again until he decides to take a break in Santa Rosa, strips off his coat and suit jacket and shuts them both in the trunk. He spreads the map out over it, rolls up his sleeves, traces the long line of the highway up toward what he’s seeking. It’s maybe two more hours, hardly longer then the tip of his thumb on paper, but when he gets to Exit 218 a force beyond his own hands tugs his wheel to the left and sets him due south instead.

 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he doesn’t fight it. He doesn’t know why until he’s a few minutes before Carrizozo, and there’s a young person on the side of the road ahead, standing beside a ratty blue suitcase and a rattier cardboard sign, a bible verse writ large in black marker: _Genesis, 31:49_.

 

It’s usually Revelations with these people, so that, at least, is a pleasant surprise.

 

They don’t have their thumb out in the universal gesture that Castiel has learned indicates a person is looking for a ride - he’s spent enough time steeped in Dean’s hard-earned paranoia that he’s never likely to put picking up a hitchhiker on his list of firsts, regardless - but as he passes something about them is so familiar that he slows down anyway, easing to a careful stop on the soft shoulder.

 

They have thick black curls and their eyes are warm and brown, and when he looks closer he can tell they’ve been falling for so long now their grace can hardly be heard above the sure and steady beat of their vessel’s heart. Nonetheless, it sings to Castiel’s in recognition with such joy it nearly brings him to his knees before them. They’re not one he recognizes; when he asks their name they just wink and shrug and smile, telling him “Jamie” as they scuff their hiking boots in the roadside dust.

 

He’ll never get used to it, not fully – these human gestures on his brethren, their informal garments, seeing them sweat or cry or laugh, seeing them eat; seeing them choosing, as he has done in his own ways, to _become_.

 

For better. For worse.

 

He has questions, of course: why here, why now, how they’ve slipped heaven’s grasp all this time. Why the bible. Why him? Why is it _always_ him? What comes out is, ““I thought I was nearly alone, here.” Castiel trips over his words, gestures back at  the broad, flat scrub of landscape around them, the yawning sky streaked with late afternoon colour and cloud. Perhaps his meaning is not made entirely clear, but Jamie catches his drift anyway and rides it back around, cool and calm as anything.

 

“There’s a few of us,” they say, “not many, anymore. But a few, like me.” _Like you_ is what they don’t say. Jamie looks Castiel up and down, glances over at his car, back to his face, at his fingers idly brushing over the pocket of his coat where his phone rests. They seem to understand. “Usually where you least expect us.”

 

 _Where are you going?_ is what he means to say – what comes out is, “do you have friends?”

 

Jamie’s head tilts to the side curiously, and Castiel could laugh. “I mean,” he amends, “forgive me. I mean, do you have people who can help you? Where you’re going.”

 

“I have people,” they tell him. They smile, ruffle their hair with their fingers. “I’m going home to them.” Then they grin. “I mean, I am just as soon as I get a ride.”  

 

“I could drive you. I am…not on a schedule.”

 

“You’re not going to Phoenix,” Jamie tells him patiently. This is true. Castiel wonders what else his grace has told them that his mouth has not.

 

Before he leaves, he gives Jamie the pastry, sun-warm in its plastic wrapping, a half bottle of water Jack left under the passenger seat, a crumpled ten dollar bill. It’s nothing, just crumbs of the life they deserve and which he by his actions he stole, unknowing, and yet - “God be with you, Castiel,” they tell him, voice rich with kindness, edged with something that’s too close to longing to think about.

 

For almost twenty miles he thinks about driving straight on to California, right to the edge of the continent and into the sea; perhaps the waters will fall back for him, and he can just keep on driving until it swallows him whole.

 

It’s not any more ridiculous than having himself locked into an iron box and dropped into the middle of the ocean just to escape his problems like a dramatic fucking asshole, anyway. When it comes down to it.

 

5:25 PM: A lovingly explicit photo of a fat hamburger glistening with grease and molten cheddar, a small mountain of liberally seasoned French fries framing the shot.

 

_5:26 PM: don’t worry_

_5:26 PM: I’ll take my fuckn Lipitor_

A few minutes later, there’s another photo, so zoomed in that Castiel has to squint to make it out, but eventually he identifies a thick slice of tomato pressed neatly into the glut of cheese, crowned with a generous smear of avocado and a scattering of fried jalapenos.

 

_5:30 PM: and you all give me shit for never eating veggies_

**_5:31 PM: I’m sorry to tell you this way_ **

**_5:31 PM: But scientifically speaking_ **

**_5:32 PM: Those are all classified as fruits._ **

**_5:32 PM: Technically._ **

**_5:33 PM: Condolences_ **

****

_5:35 PM: condolences on YOUR FACE, pal_

 

 

 

_9:09 PM: you would tell me_

_9:09 PM: you’d tell me if it was me, right?_

He thinks about the way that Dean had melted under the barest brush of his fingertips that morning, soft, willing, his dreams still clinging to his bed-warm skin like static electricity. The way he hadn’t even groped for his gun, the way his lips had parted even before his eyes opened, the way he’d sighed _Cas_ and the word had rested on his lips like it belonged there, just begging to be taken back by Castiel’s own mouth.

 

It is Dean.

 

He pulls over to the side, miles from anything, and sits there in darkness. He types words into the glowing square, types them and deletes them.

 

The little bubble pops up, and the three dots that indicate your conversational partner is also typing pulse for a moment and then disappear.

 

Pulse, disappear. Pulse, disappear.

 

But nothing more comes.

 

He types:

**9:15 PM: Not everything is about you, Dean.**

He drives through Las Cruces, _The Crosses_ , through and then past, making his way toward the mountains. It’s well past dusk in the foothills, his headlights cutting tracks of illumination into the craggy landscape as he winds up the narrow roads. It’s subtly beautiful in its austerity, dramatic juts of stone among the brush, among the gnarled trees, the dry grasses, the strange plants that he doesn’t know the names of, but whose leaves are razor-sharp, whose spines are tough. Who have to be spiky, hardy, indigestible here to survive.

 

He parks the car in an empty lot, and then he walks.

 

What he told Dean was at least partially true; his kind were not made to be subterranean.

 

He loves the bunker the way he loves the Impala, the way he loves the burger restaurants Dean takes him to, the Thai and Mexican places Sam takes them to, the way he loves coffee, television, libraries – not as a _need_ , as a necessarily sustaining source, but as an artifact of the existence the brothers have folded him into without question, making their comforts his comforts. Still - a place like the bunker is antithetical to angels, a warren of vaulted tunnels winding deep into the earth, the air artificially fresh with filtration and supplemental oxygen, immune to the natural rhythms of daylight and weather that occur outside her dense walls. Her core hums with old and inscrutable magics.

 

She does not begrudge his presence, and he knows it pleases Dean for him to keep a room, so he does. The bed he does not sleep in always has clean sheets on it. He possesses a bookshelf. He possesses books. A hook upon which to hang his coat. Sam has made him something called a cork-board, and to it he pins the drawings Dean sometimes leaves on his desk. Leaves and crumbling flowers that Jack has found pleasing. A recipe for ratatouille. One poem, torn from a magazine in a hospital waiting room. Three tickets to _Thor: Ragnarok._ (Castiel strongly suspects that Dean finds the theatrical depiction of the Norse god sexually attractive, though when questioned on his motives all he does is splutter and turn a variety of intriguing colors.)

 

_11:56 PM: Cas, I mis_

 

Still – bunkers are to angels as cages are to birds; he is neither caged nor a bird, and these days the heavenly host either is either housebound or hitchhiking, but it doesn’t matter. If he stays too long he starts to feel the press of the walls and the weight of the world, and even Dean, with his ridiculous bed-hair and his perpetual coffee breath, can’t change that. More than that, he can’t help but notice the way that Sam avoids the war room now, quietly shutters himself in the kitchen or his room or the storage vault he’s claimed as an office downstairs. If he needs something from the library, Jack is quick to fetch it for him.  

 

Castiel should have been able to do more.

 

The muscles in his thighs start to burn as he climbs, but it’s good, good to move the body he calls his, good to fill his lungs with something pure and clean and cold, good to feel _space_ around him on all sides, Moses going up the mountain to receive the word of God.

 

After some time Castiel reaches a lookout point; the valley lies in vast swaths out below him, pale and mystic under the glaring moon, small pockets of civilization sparkling with light. The wind tugs at his hair and the hem of his coat, and for a moment, just a single breathless moment, he feels as though he could simply lift his feet from the ground and be airborne once again, hurtling star-ward effortlessly.

 

It’s been years since he’s seen a view from such a height.

 

 

_2:17 AM: I hope u find_

_2:17 AM: it_

_2:17 AM: whatever ur lookin for_

_3:36 AM: wan yoy_

_3:38 AM: Cas_

_3:38 AM: want yo_

_3:39 AM: js want you 2 be hppy_

Castiel doesn’t sleep, but he spends a few fitful hours lying down in the back seat of the car regardless, staring up at the upholstered roof. At some point he fumbles the gifts that he bought out of his duffel bag, slips the geode out of the box and out of the paper. He holds it in in his two hands, clasped over the place where Jimmy Novak’s heart still dutifully beats beyond all reason, and closes his eyes.

 

Still nothing.

 

 

_8:43 AM: just in case you were wondering_

_8:43 AM: my drinkin’ and texting license has been revoked_

_8:45 AM: sorry bout that, buddy_

_9:07 AM: earth to Castiel_

_9:16 AM: …I know I’m an idiot, ok?_

_9:18 AM: throw me a bone here_

**_10:48 AM: I’m sorry Dean_ **

_10:50 AM: oh, it lives!_

_10:50 AM: thank christ_

_10:52 AM: sorry for what?_

**_10:55 AM: I have been distracted, I’m sorry._ **

**_10:55 AM: I hope the hunt is going well?_ **

****

What he means is that he spent the morning wandering the streets in town, wondering if the mission he’s currently set himself on is the right thing to do. He wonders if he should tell Dean that. He wonders if he should have told Dean what he’s been planning in the first place.

_10:58 AM: if by well u mean our body count is climbing, then yeah_

_10:58 AM: peachy_

_11:03 AM: please don’t make me ask, man_

_11:08 AM: fine, fuck it- how are ya, Cas?_

_11:08 AM: & more importantly, WHERE in the world is Castiel Sandiego?_

**_11:09 AM: I am not in San Diego._ **

****

He turns his back to the mountains and squints into the sun, snaps a picture of his own face for Dean.

 

**_11:11 PM: New Mexico is very…dry._ **

****

_11:12 AM: yeah, no shit_

_11:12 AM: you’ve been gettin’ some sun_

_11:14 AM: looks good on you_

**_11:22 AM: thank you Dean_ **

**_11:22 AM: You haven’t said much about Jack_ **

**_11:22 AM: How is he handling things?_ **

After that, Dean’s quiet for most of the day.

 

 

 

Castiel thinks that what he’s doing in southern New Mexico is probably called stalling. After Dean fails to answer the subsequent text messages that Castiel sends, Castiel tries and fails to get ahold of Jack, then Sam. He hopes they’re all right; not for the first time, either, does he wish that his wings still held their full flight abilities. Gone are the days when he could take himself to their location simply at will, could hover in the ether and watch over them, keep them from harm.

 

If they were dead, he thinks he would know, would be able to feel it somehow, but he takes little comfort in the thought.

 

He puts gas in his car, staring down the clerk who raises an eyebrow at his card with every ounce of celestial wrath he possesses until she shrugs and hands it back to him. He drives the four hours up to Santa Fe slowly - like the sort of elderly people Dean likes to complain about when he’s on an open stretch itching to put his pedal to the floor -, trying to extend it into five. He’s got Anael’s address written on the back of the stamp card he got from the Hastings coffee shop he’d sat in the day before he’d left; he’d googled “Sister Jo” at one of the free computers in the public library and came up with an accurate result almost immediately, thinking that they both should know better.

 

The thing is, once he reaches city limits, he loses what little enthusiasm he’s got left for his scheme; he takes the exit that leads to the west side of town instead of the east and drives around aimlessly until he finds a movie theater called the Violet Crown that happens to be showing _Captain Marvel._

 

Brie Larson is very pretty. Her character kicks a lot of proverbial bad guy ass. Castiel likes her very much, but not in the same way that Dean likes Thor.

 

Castiel is sure the subtext of the movie is that she is in love with her best friend, and he finds that he can sympathize. He wonders if any of the characters in the Marvel cinematic universe have ever had to deal with their loved ones reappearing from the presumed dead as a homicidal demon. He assumes that he is likely a unique case.

 

After the movie, Castiel stands outside for a while, listening to the dull roar that seeps out of the urban landscape – he’s not in Kansas anymore, either literally or figuratively. The streetlamps flicker and then tick on. The thin electric whine that fills the air could almost be the chatter of angels, if it weren’t for the faint thudding of moths making hectic, glancing contact with the glass covers, throwing their bodies mindlessly after the light.

 

He gets back in the car and drives for a bit longer, Finally, he pulls into the parking lot of a motel and pays for a room for the night.

 

_8:07 PM: sorry buddy, can’t talk yet. Wrapping this thing up soon, wish me luck!_

He should really just go home in the morning.

Castiel hangs his coat on the hook by the door. He removes his shoes, his suit jacket, and his tie, and sits on top of the shiny bedspread to go surfing on the channels. There isn’t much on, but he watches a few episodes of _Law & Order _until he’s bored of good actors pretending to be bad at lying and snaps it off again. He tries to think of what Dean would do in his situation but scraps that idea almost as soon as it’s entered his mind – he doesn’t have any beer, and he’s never really warmed to the idea of exotic dancers.

 

He thinks about what Sam might do instead, and decides to get one of his books from his bag so that he can finish it, but as he stands his eyes fall on the Gideon bible resting on the bedside table. He sits back down, opens it on his knees, flips through the pages until he finds Genesis.

 

Chapter 31, verse 49:

 

_And Mizpah; for he said, The LORD watch between me and thee,_

_when we are absent one from another._

The Lord.

 

As Dean would say: Yeah friggin’ right.

 

 

 

_10:55 PM: hey, can I give you a call?_

He beats Dean to the punch, hitting the little green phone button as soon as his phone has stopped vibrating in his hand. “ _Dean_. It’s good to hear your voice. Is everything all right?”

 

“Uh, hey Cas. You, like, sittin’ on your phone there or what?”

 

“I was not sitting on my phone. I’ve been…I was worried about you. Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine, man. The case was wild, turned out to be this cursed cannibal monster dude in the forest who melted into a pile of mushy green stuff once we stabbed him with a silver knife.” Dean pauses, and Castiel can hear the grin in his voice. “It was pretty awesome.”

 

“It was gross!” Sam says loudly in the background.

 

“Okay yeah, it was gross, but it was totally somethin’ out of Indiana Jones.”

 

“The handsome archaeologist with the whip and the preposterous hat, yes?”

 

“His hat’s not – ugh, _fine_ , yes. That guy.”

 

“And Jack – how is he? May I talk to him?”

 

The line abruptly goes quiet, but Castiel can hear strange, muffled scuffling noises and the occasional snatch of aggressively whispered conversation, as though someone’s pressed their thumb over the microphone for privacy but isn’t doing a very good job of it. It goes on for rather longer than he thinks necessary, and after a sudden burst of “ _stow it, Sam, I got this!”_ that he probably isn’t supposed to hear, Dean comes back at full volume, sounding vaguely winded.

 

He takes a few moments to breathe, and then he says, “Cas, I, uh. I gotta tell you something.”

 

His words give Castiel the unexpected sensation of lifting out of his vessel, though he can also sense that his body remains firmly where he last placed it on the motel bed. Independent of his control, he can feel the musculature of his face sliding into the same stony expression he gave the gas station clerk earlier in the day.

 

“What did you _do_ , Dean?”

 

“Okay, god, don’t freak out, okay? Jack’s alive. He’s…he’s…Cas, I promise you, Jack is fine, he was never in any danger. I swear on my life. Hell, I swear on Sammy’s life.”

 

Castiel blinks. “Dean, you’ll have to forgive me if I still don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. Where is Jack? Why isn’t he with you?”

 

There’s another round of the scuffling noises and the argument, and then Dean says, “we, uh, we didn’t – _Sam, fuck off, jesus! –_ all right, _I._ I…didn’t actually ask Jack to come on the hunt with us.”

 

“You didn’t ask Jack to come on the hunt with you,” Castiel repeats. “I don’t understand.”

 

“Not much to understand,” Dean says petulantly. “You heard what I said.”

 

“Dean asked Jack to stay home and do the grocery shopping!” Sam breaks in, once again much too loudly for someone who is likely only a diner’s table or a car’s seat distance away from his brother. He must grab the phone away from Dean, because then his voice is right up next to the speaker. “He’s afraid of what will happen if Jack starts using his powers again before we know he has full control of them.”

 

“What you’re saying is,” Castiel sighs, beginning to comprehend why he has observed humans pinching the bridge of their nose when they are weary or frustrated, “is that you didn’t trust a fully-powered Nephilim who has been drawing on his human soul – and who is the son of Lucifer, no less -  with responsible use of his powers, so you left him alone in his home with no guidance. And asked him to go into town. Alone. Because nothing bad could possibly happen under those circumstances.”

 

“You asked me to look out for him!”

 

“I asked you to keep a close eye on him, Dean! Do you not see a difference?”

 

“You weren’t there, Cas!” Dean shouts “You aren’t here, you’re off in New Mexico doing god knows what – I sure don’t, because you won’t be straight with me -, and I had to make a call!”

 

After that, there’s silence for a while. A few minutes pass; Castiel pulls the phone away from his ear to check if Dean’s hung up on him, but the numbers on the call timer are still climbing.

 

“Look, I’m sorry,” he says, much softer than before, “I shouldn’t have…I know I made a mistake, Cas. You’d better believe I know, because Sam’s been bitching at me about it ever since we left the kid, and non-stop for the last twenty miles.” Sam grumbles something in the affirmative. Castiel can’t help but chuckle at that. “I want to keep Jack safe too, you both know that.”

 

“Where are you two now?”

 

“We’re on the road back home. Gonna stop at a truck stop to get the worst of this goop off us, but Sam’s gunnin’ to do the whole six-hour haul tonight.” Dean hesitates. “He thinks we should get back to Jack ASAP. He’s probably right.”

 

“Sam is a wise man,” Castiel deadpans. “At least in my experience.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.” The smile is back in Dean’s voice, and the warmth of it unspools something tender and urgent and familiar inside Castiel, something that feels all the more poignant and insufferable for separation.

 

“I’m fine, Dean,” he says gently, pitching his voice low so that only Dean can hear. “I’m in Santa Fe, and I’m fine, and if there’s something to tell you you’ll be the first to know, I promise. I just don’t want to – what’s the expression? – oh, put the cart before the horse.”

 

“You’ve been watching too many John Wayne movies, you old cowpoke,” Dean teases, and somehow it’s back to feeling all right again by the time Sam starts complaining at them to hang up or he’ll vomit all over the steering wheel.

 

 

_12:01 AM: i’m sorry I yelled at you_

_12:01 AM: we can talk about it more tomorrow if you want_

 

 

Castiel does not leave Santa Fe in the morning.

 

 

 

Her house is in a quiet, rural neighbourhood, not far up a canyon road east of the city. A long, low thing made of adobe, it’s painted the same muted shade of purple as the lilac bush that runs riot all along the fence. There’s an enamelled cross hung just above the weathered pine door, and a tall, hearty honey locust tree shading the tiled courtyard below. Castiel stands looking at it for a moment before he spots the sign hung in the arch of the garden gate _: LA LUZ – Sister Jo Reyes, spiritual healer. By Appointment Only._

He does not have an appointment.

 

Castiel pushes the gate open and follows the flowers that line the path to the door. He has to knock several times before she answers, and when she does her hair is wet, and she’s barefoot, dressed in a flowing silk robe.

 

“Oh, good,” she says. “You.”

 

“I apologize for interrupting you, Anael. I was hoping you and I could speak, if you don’t mind.”

 

“Let’s pretend for a second that I do mind.” She rests her hip on the frame, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m letting you inside my house…why?”  

 

“Please, Anael, I’m not asking you to trust me. But I need…I need your help. And I need you to hear me out. And if you can’t do that, if you can’t help my family, then I’m happy to leave here and never come back.” She straightens in the doorway and looks him up and down, arms still crossed; Castiel squares his shoulders and extends his hand to her in the universal human gesture of respect. “You have my word.”

 

She doesn’t shake it; instead, she spends another long moment assessing him before she heaves a sigh, rolls her eyes, and lets her arms fall at her sides, turning to walk down the hallway behind her. “Fine,” she calls back over her shoulder, “but I’m going to get dressed first. Don’t just stand there, come in! You can sit in the kitchen as long as you don’t touch anything.”

 

Castiel closes the door behind himself and moves carefully through the hall, two fingers on the hilt of his blade. There’s nothing terribly threatening that he can see at first glance, barring some robustly rendered charcoal sketches of a nude female form, and an uncomfortably large steer skull hung over the fireplace. He sits warily at a wide wooden table that’s built into the abbreviated wall overlooking the sunken living room, wondering exactly what it is that he’s not supposed to touch.  Perhaps it’s the collection of small silver amulets hung on a supporting beam near the windows. The glass bowl of glass apples on the sill. Perhaps it’s the embroidered cushions placed artfully along the bench – he carefully pushes the one nearest him a little further to the left.

 

The kitchen is painted sky blue; the living space that he can see is a soft orange colour that puts him in mind of the apricots Sam brings home from the farmer’s market in the summer and hoards for himself. There’s a pair of aged French doors beyond that looks like they lead to another garden – he can see a hammock on one side, lavender, sprigs of lettuce, small tomatoes already ripening on the vine on the other.

 

It looks like a home. It looks nothing at all like the bunker.

 

“Believe me, I did not pick these colours, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Anael reappears behind him, now dressed in jeans and a white cotton blouse, piling her dried hair into a knot of curls near the top of her head. “Definitely not the décor.”  She moves around the kitchen, busies herself filling the kettle with water and putting it on the stove. “But I don’t mind.” She shrugs. “Helps to give the whole ‘bohemian healer’ thing more authenticity around here.”

 

Then she fixes her gaze on Castiel, his hands folded in front of himself.  “Don’t get too comfortable. I have a client coming in an hour, and I don’t do spectators anymore. How do you take your tea?”

 

Of all the questions he might have been expecting, that was not one of them. “I don’t drink…tea.” She laughs at that.

 

“And I had heard how skilled you were at playing human, my mistake.”

 

“I don’t mean…” Castiel shakes his head and sighs. “Never mind. I see you’re back to healing humans for human money, Anael?”

 

“Hmm. I’m doing something good for them, they’re doing something good for me. Fair is fair, isn’t it?” There’s another of those lengthy, calculating looks. He watches her stretch up on tiptoes to collect a pair of clay mugs from a high cupboard, as she brings out the milk and sugar, but it seems as though she hesitates to say more, perhaps sensing his thoughts.  She works in silence to prepare the tea, a lively blend of spices pricking at his nose.

 

_9:43 AM: Cas I’m sorry_

 

Finally she draws a deep breath and says, “you should know, if you’re going to give me the stern lecture on how the abilities our so-called ‘Father’ gave to us shouldn’t be traded for compensation, you can save it. Do you know that Lucifer himself said those words to me, Castiel, the first day we met?” Anael scoffs, meeting his eyes directly for the first time since he’s entered the house. “Perhaps you’re not so different, after all.”

 

“I was not planning to lecture you.”

 

“But you were thinking it, weren’t you? Perhaps you’re a better fit to raise his son thank he thinks.”

 

“Lucifer is _dead_ , Anael.” The words come out harsher than he intends, and she stills at the counter, her back rigid. “And Jack. Jack is not his son any more than you are my sister.”

 

“If that’s the way you talk to those you wish to ask for help, it’s no wonder you’re doing so well,” she hisses, hands trembling. The mug she’s holding slips out of her grasp and smashes to pieces on the floor, but she doesn’t so much as look away from his face. “You know, I’ve heard about what you’ve been up to this last year, you and your _family_. Tearing the fabric of reality, letting another universe’s demented version of Michael into this world, into your _boyfriend_ without a second thought for how your actions might affect the rest of us. Haven’t you done enough?”

 

Castiel thinks about telling her that Dean is not his _boyfriend_ , can never be, but quietly concludes that this is hardly the most pressing argument at hand. While Anael watches, he stands, removes his overcoat, and folds it over the back of her chair before he lowers himself to his knees to pick up the pieces. A few seconds pass, and then she’s crouching there with him, helping him scoop the larger shards into an empty plastic container and sweeping up the rest.

 

“We don’t have to do it like this,” he says, wondering if he’s telling himself as much as her.

 

“I have to save my grace for my client,” she shoots back. “It’s not exactly in unlimited supply these days.”

 

Castiel wonders if this was a mistake. He sits back on his heels and thinks about driving his car those six hundred and thirty miles home again, Moses coming back down the mountain empty-handed. Just then, the kettle starts wailing, not the shrill whistle he expects but a plaintive harmonic noise like a train heard from a distance. Anael rolls her eyes and takes the container from him, waving him back to his seat. She takes another mug down from the cupboard.

 

“I don’t understand how you believe you can judge me, or my path since I’ve walked this earth. All those times you’ve helped the Winchesters – fought for them, killed for them, _died_ for them, Castiel. You’re telling me that it was always out of the goodness of your little…whatever you’ve got going on there. It was never transactional? Never motivated by something you needed? That you _desired_.” Anael laughs again, mirthless, merciless this time. “How selfless of you.”

 

“Anael, forgive me. It was not my place.”

 

“No shit,” she says fiercely, and then she does something unexpected – she smirks, suddenly reminding him so much of Dean that it’s unsettling. “You know I’m right, though.”

 

Castiel can only shrug. She certainly isn’t wrong.

 

“Of course I’m doing it for money. This world runs on it the same way we run on grace.” She picks up the thread of their earlier conversation, sets the new cup down in front of him, then sinks into the velvet chair beside him, blows the steam off her own. “I don’t need it, of course. But isn’t it nice to _want_ something, Castiel?”

 

_10:25 AM: when’re you coming home?_

_10:25 AM: sam wants to know_

 

“I don’t know if nice is the word,” he admits, just as his phone pings again.

 

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?”

 

Castiel snaps it closed. He presses down the button on the side until it vibrates in his hand. Places it face-down on the table. Meets her eyes. And waits.

 

Anael waits right back.

 

Castiel looks away first. “I have money,” he says.

 

“Now,” she counters with a smile, leaning back in her chair. “ _Brother_. Why don’t you go on and tell me why you’re really here?”

 

x

 

**Author's Note:**

> me: hey let's write a coda for that episode. short and sweet, we can do this!
> 
> also me: hey how about a 8000 word treatise on Castiel's current existential angst, that's basically an alternate episode, but with dessert and emojis hahahaha _sobs_
> 
>  
> 
> anyway, if you like my writing please come follow me on Tumblr at [justholdingstill](https://justholdingstill.tumblr.com/)! I'm the world's slowest writer so I refuse to promise you constantly riveting content, but I'm working on a variety of different things at the moment and I reblog other people's lovely stories & art & pleasing tidbits in the meantime.
> 
> (the tumblr reblobbable link, if you are so inclined: <https://justholdingstill.tumblr.com/post/183943873176/how-have-the-mighty-a-long-ass-14x16-coda-fic>)
> 
> mad props to the ever-lovely [60r3d0m](https://60r3d0m.tumblr.com/), who, when I told her I was stuck, helped me come up with the concept for Estelle, and thereby exploded the story by like 2k. thanks, you're the best/worst. XD
> 
> also full disclosure I have not tried this recipe for [salt + honey pie](https://selfproclaimedfoodie.com/salt-honey-pie/) yet but it's definitely a project for this weekend. If you make it, please let me know if it's as amazing as I imagine!


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